Identifying the Advantages of VB.NET 3

[coco86]

Here's a question for all you .Net gurus out there.

How do I explain to a non-technical audience why it's worth the cost of training and software to switch from VB6 and Access 2000 for desktop apps and traditional ASP for Web apps to .Net?




-Coco

 

[DougP]

Its the BEST VB yet
Faster
Offers tons of new Debug features
Easily ports to WEB
Tons of code samples
It's intuitve and creates the code for you. Example:
When you type 'If' xxxx
It creates the 'End if'
for you

It is as Powerful as C based languages now.
Ther is no limit to expandablity.
Its what everyone wants their app written in.

DougP, MCP, A+

 

[RiverGuy]

By non-technical, I assume you are meaning the users of the finished product.

If you are not making improvements or adding new features, I would not even make the switch.

So sum up your points in that you are adding these features, making these improvements. The users do not need to know what language it was coded in. Tell the users about the advantages of the new product that you are offering, not the advantages of you using different technology to create it.

 

[chiph]

1) VB6 will be going to fee-based support the middle of next year.

2) Apps will run faster

3) Prepare you for Longhorn

4) Richer development experience & environment.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[DougP]

What's non-techical for LongHorn.
Are we creating programs for Cows now?

DougP, MCP, A+

 

[vinidel]

In my opinion client server projects (small or enterprise wide) if can be designed and implemented in Object Oriented Methodology they are easy to maintain & most importantly easy to expand with the new requirements of the business.

Now you can use VB6 or MS Access 2000 for these projects but you can not implement with true OOA. So you do have limitations with them.

VB.NET gives this advantage to all VB & Access developers to develop client server projects in OOA.

Of course you can use java too, but VB.NET comes with the ease of debugging and ofcourse rich GUI.

So if you truly design and implement your projects in OOA, you will see how easy it is to expand and maintain those projects.

I guess that should be your point of discussion if you have to convience WHY .NET languages?

 

[coco86]

Thanks for the responses.

The non-technical audience I need to convince are my employers. I am the only developer at my company. Most of the applications I write are for in-house use.

I want to start using .NET because I believe it will make me more productive. I've only just started to learn .NET but already I can see the many ways it will speed up development time. It's not just sticking in the "end if" and the automatic indentation (although those are very cool). Things like the ability to sort an array without writing a bunch of code, a drop down list of string handling functions (no more going to the help files to remember the exact function name), function calls instead of APIs, the list goes on... I sat through a web cast the other day and learned you could add objects to a listbox which would not only store them and return the selected one but would also automatically display a specified property. How cool is that?

Despite the fact that I am a VB programmer I learned my OO programming in C++ and Java. I like the new capabilities that VB.NET has in that regard. (constructors--Yeah!!) I've always felt sort of like I was stuffing the proverbial square peg into a round hole when doing OO programming in VB.

As I develop web apps as well as desktop apps, I also like the idea of using the same language for both. There's also the matter of debugging web apps. I haven't done it yet but I hear it's great And maybe I don't know the secret but it takes me forever to build a datagrid in traditional ASP. In .NET it's what--minutes?

Security implementation seems to be more robust and less complicated in .NET--do you feel that is true?

I've heard that .NET apps use more resources than VB6 apps. However, I write a lot of my in-house applications in Access because the development time is shorter. Since Access uses quite a bit of resources itself, I'm wondering if there would be a difference. (Chip-you said apps run faster. Why is that?)

I'm also thinking it would eliminate some of the problems I'm having as we gradually upgrade our workstations to XP. Not all of my apps and dlls have handled the transition gracefully. I would think the .NET platform would handle the differences and the application would run the same. Isn't that supposed to be the point?

My company will pay for my training but I have to explain how it will benefit them. A lot of the features that excite me mean nothing to them. They don't really understand how a program is written anyway and already think development should take far less time time than it does.




-Coco

 

[chiph]

Longhorn is the codename of the next desktop OS from Microsoft.

.NET apps run faster than VB6 apps because the compiler integrates more advanced technology than the 5+ year old VB compiler.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[coco86]

Thanks Chip that's a good, easy to understand point for my list.

Vinidel, I agree the Object Oriented aspects are key reasons to upgrade, but how do I explain that (in 500 words or less ) to someone who doesn't understand what OO programming is and why it makes programs easier to maintain and extend--let alone the differences between objects in VB6 and objects in VB.NET.

-Coco